This Transient Permanence
by Meraki S
Summary: Untouchable: to continue surviving, when sanity has faded. Trapped in a prison camp after Terra Prime takes control of the Terran solar system, Malcolm Reed learns invincibility. AU. Rated M because of very dark themes. Character death.


Disclaimer: I don't own Star Trek.

AN: Be warned: this is a very dark story. It was partially inspired by a book I read about the Holocaust. Obviously I can't claim any meaningful understanding of the horrors of WWII, but that's the lens through which this story was written. In my opinion, Terra Prime could be considered an analogy for Nazi Germany; so this is a very, very dark look at what Terra Prime could have become. Reader discretion is advised.

* * *

The day Malcolm is transferred off the holding ship and into a prison camp whose name he does not know is a day of clarity, of wits sharpened to alert perfection by fear and adrenaline and uncertainty. _I am Lieutenant Malcolm Reed of the starship Enterprise,_ he recites, mantra-like, in his head, preparing for the most likely of all the possibilities he can imagine, _and you will not break me._ It is overly dramatic, even for him, a man with a flare for drama, but the words give him confidence and strength and he prays they will mean something.

He has been stripped of his clothes and of everything else, just like all the other prisoners in this hold. Terra Prime is taking no risks that its prisoners, alien and pro-contact humans alike, will smuggle in anything that might prove useful. The organization has gained a powerful but understandably precarious hold in the Terran system, and it intends to take no risks whatsoever of conflict or uprising occurring amongst its sentient waste, these prisoners who are being herded away en mass to be held for an indeterminate time in an unknown place until an undecided point in the future.

The prisoners are excreted out of the ship and into a concrete and steel wasteland of uniform buildings and uniformed guards, all stationed behind walls or barriers of glass that separate them from the prisoners as completely as the Enterprise's hull used to protect her crew from the unforgiving vacuum of space.

He does not know where he is, does not know what planet he is on. It is cold, just cold enough to be gnawing and painful as he stands with a hundred, two hundred, a thousand others, waiting, with weapons pointed from above, to be shot or to be released into this mess of barbed wire and glass and barrenness. He waits, and the minutes and hours pass slowly.

Malcolm's feet and spine ache with a sharp, stabbing pain but he does not dare to move beyond a subtle shifting because he's not ready to die just yet, thanks.

The Vulcan standing next to Malcolm sways and nearly falls, and as surreptitiously as he can Malcolm puts out a hand to steady him. The Vulcan's skin is pale olive and chilly, and at Malcolm's touch he receives a startled sideways glance from dark, sick eyes. Except for that, the Vulcan does not acknowledge him – afraid to, perhaps. Malcolm sees in the blank face what he feels but cannot express: that this being, like himself, has been reduced by others to a mere object of logistical inconvenience. Species is irrelevant: this Vulcan shares the same humiliation, the same uncertainties, the same torture faced by each of these prisoners.

When at last, after hours that seem to stretch into days, this latest group of prisoners is released toward the barracks-buildings, the Vulcan is unable to walk without help, so Malcolm supports him into the nearest building and crouches nearby when the Vulcan collapses on the ground.

After a while, the comparative warmth of indoors seems to sink in and some color returns to the Vulcan's pale face. Malcolm tries to communicate, first in Standard, but then, when his efforts go unrewarded, in clumsy, halting Vulcan. He'd never had much use for learning other languages – that was Hoshi's job, and besides they had the Universal Translator, but Hoshi had insisted on giving the senior staff lessons in several of the more common alien tongues. It had taken her a while to talk him into seeing the value, but once he'd realized the security applications of speaking multiple languages, in case he were to ever be in a situation involving Vulcans or Andorians and no Universal Translator, Malcolm had been a quick study.

The sound of his native tongue startles the Vulcan, and it is only after Malcolm repeats his tentative query that he receives an answer. The Vulcan's name is Vaughn, Malcolm learns. He was captured three days ago, he believes, but time on board a ship is different from Earth time and there is no way to be sure. He is not hurt, only cold and hungry. He does not understand why a human is in this camp – wasn't the idea of Terra Prime to protect the Terran system for human use by driving out aliens and reserving it for its native inhabitants?

Malcolm tries to explain, but he's far from fluent in Vulcan and the best he can manage is a rough approximation of what he means to say. It's close enough, he thinks, for the Vulcan to believe he is simply one of many political convicts here, imprisoned on the whim of Terra Prime.

He wonders what became of Trip, T'Pol, and their hybrid baby. For all he knows, they could be somewhere in this vast camp, so close to him and yet so far removed.

* * *

Time passes, and Malcolm is only partially aware of it as a vague and distant force in the background of the minute-to-minute grind of existence. In this vast, overturned bowl of concrete there is neither night nor day, but always an artificial, glaring light, as constant in its level as it is in its unwaveringness. There's nowhere to hide that is not monitored, and from time to time waves of armored, faceless soldiers walk through the camp, killing with brutality and without order. Usually, a shipment of prisoners arrives the next day.

At other times, individuals are singled out and taken away. They return hours or days later, bodies and minds shattered by the unspeakable horrors they have undergone. They die after a few days.

Fights break out between the prisoners: for food, for space, for life, and for things more menial. At first, Malcolm watches with disdain. All of these individuals are suffering the same horrors together – how can they fight and snarl and hurt each other like animals, when their fears are all the same? He learns, much later, that their shared fears are the reason they fight. Each one is overwhelmed by uncertainty and misery and terror; for any one of them to try to imagine the magnitude of pain the whole camp encompasses, when each being is regarded as a separate and sentient individual, is more than the mind can bear; literally, in many cases, as the minds of some snap under the unendurable burden of this incomprehensible horror.

Food is distributed once in every time period Malcolm assumes is a day, when chutes high in the inward-curving walls open and rain down barely-edible scraps upon a waiting population of desperate, famished creatures, most of whom are literally willing to kill for a scrap of food. Some of them, Malcolm learns, have been here for many months, since long before he had even heard of Terra Prime. The organization has been slowly sinking its fingers into the life and politics of Earth for longer than he knew, longer than anyone had known.

The vast water tanks are filled too, just after the food is dropped, and competition for a space at one of the taps, even fleetingly, is exponentially fiercer, if that is possible, than for food. Those who somehow have their hands on a watertight vessel of any kind are the highest targets, because such a vessel is the greatest prize that exists within the camp. It can mean the difference between death, or bare existence for another day.

Waste disposal is negligible. There is an open cesspool, which is emptied occasionally, but many people are too afraid or repulsed to go near it, and so the whole camp has become a stinking sewer. Gradually, Malcolm's sense of smell deadens and he barely notices the incessant stench of the place which plagues Vaughn's sensitive Vulcan sinuses so terribly.

Disease is rampant. Every day, dozens die of ailments ranging from fever to septic poisoning to dehydration to starvation. Infection is frequent, too; hardly anyone goes more than a few days without an injury, due to the vicious fights for food and water. An open wound, in this environment, is almost a death sentence.

Slowly, Malcolm's disdain for the fighting dissipates, worn away by hunger and thirst. He learns to let his mind go slack, as does every other prisoner, when the feeding times come. He learns not to see the faces or hear the cries, but only to fight blindly for – not what is his, because it is always stolen from another – but for what will, perhaps, keep him and Vaughn alive for another day. He has never been so glad as now for his Section training: the ability to hurt and to kill without conscience, without awareness. To fight and to win, always to win. Never have these gifts been honed to such razor-edged perfection as now.

Vaughn becomes ill with a slow, wasting fever that eats away at body and mind alike. Malcolm, despite his efforts to keep out of unnecessary fights, one day finds himself standing over the Vulcan, fists soiled with the blood of another, an alien who had gone so far as to attack one of his own kind in an attempt to steal a place in the barracks perhaps half a degree warmer than his own. Afterward, Malcolm stays beside Vaughn most of the time, and the other occupants of this building learn not to get too close to the dark-haired demon that guards its chosen companion with all the ferocity of a crazed _lematya_.

* * *

It's completely by accident one day that he finds Trip. Malcolm is skulking behind another barracks, rooting through a pile of trash in search of anything remotely useful for a sick Vulcan, when at a distance he sees blond hair. This is unusual in a camp comprised primarily of Vulcans, most of whom have dark brown or black hair. But from behind, as he follows this man, he can't immediately be sure it's his friend, and he's made a mistaken identification too many times before to allow himself to jump to conclusions. This man is skeletally thin, his sharply etched shoulder blades showing through the scarred, bruised, and parchment-thin grey skin on his back. But as he rounds a corner, Malcolm catches sight of his face. It is Trip; it is the same face, and yet horribly different. Where Trip's face was alive with radiant energy, this man's expression is as haunted as every other face. Where Trip's bright blue eyes shone with vitality, this man's eyes are sunken and dull. This face presents a reflection of the changes which have afflicted Malcolm as well, and never before has he known more clearly than now that he has no desire to look in a mirror.

Malcolm almost returns to his barracks building without speaking to Trip. He wants to forget he has seen him; wants to still be able to pretend Trip is out there somewhere, free and – if not safe, at least alive – and fighting back. Wants to still pretend that living, vital spark flares in Trip's eyes with the brightness of a man who is not beyond the reaches of hope.

He accosts Trip behind one of the buildings, hidden from the sight of passersby.

"Trip."

At the word, Trip freezes. He turns slowly, his face chalky pale, and they stare at each other for a long, silent moment, taking in the effects of starvation and cruelty and constant fear on each other. Malcolm suspects that neither of them likes what they see.

"Malcolm." Trip licks his lips nervously. "I thought they killed you."

"I didn't know you were here," Malcolm tells him. "What about T'Pol? Is she here too?"

"Dead," Trip says briefly, with the first flash of potential, fledgling humanity that Malcolm has yet seen in his face as he says it; this dies, almost before it is hatched. "And the baby. She was sick – the baby, I mean. She wouldn't have lived anyway."

"And T'Pol?"

"Executed. They did it on live broadcast."

Malcolm feels a flash of detached fury that simmers out almost before it coalesces. T'Pol is from another life, one lived by the man he used to be. The person he is now is as much a stranger to T'Pol as he is to the man standing in front of him.

"I should go," Trip says, glancing nervously around as if he expects to be attacked at any moment. Malcolm wants to cry _wait, no!_ but he stands looking silently after Trip as the other man backs away.

"Trip," he says, just before Trip rounds the corner, making the other man glance back, "I'm glad you're not dead."

These stilted words are all he can manage for the friend who only months ago – was it only months? – he would have died for.

"Yeah," Trip says quietly, without meeting his eyes. "You too."

They see each other again after that, but they do not speak, do not acknowledge each other. Their eyes meet and flit past, in exactly the same unacknowledgment they exchange with complete strangers. They are nothing different, just two out of a million suffering wretches who may or may not have spoken together, shared a meal, shared bonds of friendship and familiarity, before arriving in this grey order-less hell that has so efficiently done its job, to reduce them to something sub-human, to creatures so far below self-respect that they will never again be a nuisance to Terra Prime, even in the doubtful event that they should ever again see the outside world which has, apparently, forgotten them completely.

* * *

In the days and weeks following this encounter Vaughn grows sicker, and Malcolm observes the steady falling away of sanity. The Vulcan talks to himself, sometimes softly and sometimes loudly, in garbled Vulcan that Malcolm is only rarely able to follow, and which seems to make more sense when he does not try to. Emotional restraint is a thing of the past; illness and despair and cold have reduced the Vulcan's barriers and exposed him to a world of mental torture his species was never designed to endure: is it any wonder, then, that he has cracked? Sometimes Malcolm thinks Vaughn's nonsensical ramblings are the sanest thing that exists in this hellish pit, and his outbursts of emotion, unpredictable in both timing and intensity, are the only windows to how the sane world outside might react if exposed to this same incomprehensible abyss of cruelty and terror.

He brings the Vulcan food, which goes mostly uneaten, and water when he can get it, which Vaughn drinks in great thirsty gulps as if it is a lifeline to a forgotten time of order and reality. He is constantly dehydrated, his skin sticking in folds when he picks at it rather than sliding back into a natural smoothness. Malcolm tries to stop the Vulcan from scratching himself raw, but there is a limit to the number of hours he can stay awake at a stretch, and the Vulcan seems always to be awake, always to be clawing himself as if to peel away this reality and wake himself up out of the infernal nightmare. Talking to him has become an exercise in futility, yet Malcolm continues to try because it feels like a link to sanity, even if most of the time he does not know or understand the words or even the language which he is speaking.

Some nights the Vulcan is feverishly hot, and other times he shivers relentlessly. His eyes have long since gone vacant with illness; in truth, this is something of a relief, because now his tears are simply a product of his madness, his sobs simply another demented raving. They have long since ceased to be the horrified, meaningful grieving of a sentient being from whom all barriers have been scoured away, of a being moreover who was never meant to grieve so consciously but who has been overcome by the ceaseless, unendurable misery of this camp. His crying is easier to bear now, and Malcolm can stand to be around him during the periods of hopeless weeping. He does not flee as he used to, or pretend not to notice, cowed by a cowardice and an incomprehension he did not understand, which left him feeling lost in something too big to think of, feeling himself too young and fragile to understand. Now he can sit with the Vulcan's head resting in his lap, can sit and stroke the dark matted head and speak words and phrases that have lost their meaning even to him. He can soothe as he would the hurts of an injured animal, because that is what this being has become: a creature, unaware of what is happening to it.

Most days, Malcolm forgets this being has a name, a past life. _Vaughn_ fades away, and even _the Vulcan_ , and this is simply a daily duty he fulfills, like picking the fleas out of his hair and eating them because he's starving, and the food he brings for his charge is off-limits to him, even if it always goes untouched.

It is not despair, even, that fills his days: not now, not anymore. It is an odd, blank vacancy, which if it were to manifest itself as a color would be not black nor even grey but a dull sort of beige, the kind of color that sets a creeping in one's stomach because it means absolutely nothing.

* * *

Vaughn dies on a day exactly like a hundred unnumbered others and a cascading void opens before Malcolm because caring for the Vulcan, or the creature it had become, has been the only thing he had to cling to for stability in a world that is constantly and never changing. With the Vulcan gone, Malcolm sleeps the sleep of the tormented and dreams, and wakes himself with his screaming into a world he cannot distinguish from the worst of his nightmares. He sometimes wakes in a part of the camp he does not know, dazed and aching, and has to wander for hours in confusion and distress until he finds his way back to his compound. Sometimes, though, it is not his compound but the brig, Enterprise's brig, with Captain Archer's accusing stare gazing out at him from the walls and asking _what would your father think of you now?_ Other times it is T'Pol, _weren't you the Tactical Officer? And you were the one who got me captured, who got me and my baby killed._ She does not say that, of course, but he does and he hears it all the same. Sometimes, it is his father.

Stuart Reed does not speak, but Malcolm dreads his face more than any of the others because it holds so much more accusation behind the silent grey-eyed mask than their words can ever carry. It holds the guilt of a lifetime, of Malcolm's lifetime, from which he knows there is no escape and no redemption.

He wakes screaming, perhaps, but never crying. His body is too wasted away, too deprived and devoid of water to waste the precious resource in such a futile and unnecessary way. He has forgotten what crying means, too; here there is so much emotion, too much and yet none at all, that it has come to be meaningless – worse than meaningless, insufficient rather, so insufficient that to weep in the face of what happens here is to blow a single breath of air into the face of a roaring wildfire. It is beyond comprehension, what happens here, and human expression is simply unequipped to handle the monstrosities. So human expression, human reason, human sanity, fails in the presence of something past any sentient belief or understanding.

* * *

When rescue comes, then, it is simply another impossibility in a string of impossibilities. Hands touch him, voices speak to him, perhaps he speaks back and perhaps he does not. He is traded through hands like a worn-out paper dollar. The world has left him behind in its shifting, shadowy passage. Sometimes he is aware of being tube-fed, or of a quiet sound – not a voice, just a string of incoherent syllables – directed at him as a grip on his arm steadies him while his body moves somewhere, of his own accord or someone else's he knows not.

But his body grows stronger, given nutrients and _water_ , so much water that in the first few days his stomach needs to be pumped three times, but there is water and he can drink and his mind will not stop clamoring for the blissful, blessed liquid even though his body is totally sated.

One day there is a face he dimly knows, a woman's face with grey eyes like his own and an accent like home and a familiarity like he has seen her before, like he has known her before, like he has grown up beside his little sister Madeline in another lifetime far, too far removed from this one. He stares into this anonymous face while the woman speaks to him, sounds with no more meaning than the syllables he directs at her, which he doesn't know either – he is not speaking a language, any language, but he feels she wants him to try, and so he does, even though she cannot understand him and he cannot either, and it fills him with a frustration so terrible and so terrifying he tries to strangle himself on the transparent tube that connects to his arm after she has left.

After that, he is given another pill in addition to the ones foisted upon him every day, a pill that is half blue and half white and keeps him drugged and uncaring and barely aware.

Then another face comes, and he knows this one because it has haunted him for the last _entirety_ of his life, because Stuart is someone he loves and hates and respects and fears, and this is a name that will never escape him no matter how shattered the rest of his consciousness has become: Father.

But Father is different somehow, older and wiser and no longer sharp with disappointment and masked anger. He is quiet and gentle now, infinitely patient as he coaxes Malcolm to eat, spoonful by spoonful, the nutritious but textureless mush a faceless, nameless nurse usually puts in his mouth, forcing it sometimes against his will. Father does not force him, but tries again and again with the same silent, patient determination so that soon it becomes easier simply to accept than to resist.

And though Father speaks in the same disjointed, incomprehensible syllables and sounds as everyone else does, sounds that have lost their meaning to Malcolm's tormented soul, he can speak in other ways too: by a soft, loving caress through Malcolm's unkempt hair; by the gentle pressure of a firm, callused hand on Malcolm's; by the tears he sheds openly, sometimes, when the room is empty save for himself and his son, the son he _loves_ and _is proud of_ , and whose forgiveness he _craves but can never earn_.

Malcolm learns to trust this man, this Father, who once he feared and dreaded. He learns to trust him to return, to bear with quiet endurance of all Malcolm's inconsistencies and fears and agonies, which so many others of his previous nurses have tired of and have resorted to dealing with through pills and restraints and force.

He learns to trust the strong hand on his, and to feel it there and not be afraid on the day that Father sits weeping beside his bed for many hours before pressing a kiss to his forehead and a cool, painless hypospray to his neck, a hypospray filled with something which makes the world dissolve slowly into a warm, dark sea, allowing Malcolm to drift away, for the first time in his life unafraid of drowning.


End file.
